Annals of a Fourth Rate Historian

I don’t remember what the context or the thread was where some commenter called me a “fourth-rate historian.” Was it Greenwald? Anyway, I was reading Ezra Klein’s interview with Noam Chomsky this morning and well….

EZRA KLEIN: Let me ask you about the power structures today. So given your expectations for him, how would you assess Joe Biden’s administration so far?

NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s a split story. On domestic policy, it’s doing better than I expected frankly. In fact, as Erik Loomis points out, Biden is the first president, probably since F.D.R., to take a strong stand in favor of unionization. Biden has people in his Council of Economic Advisors who are heterodox economists, broken out of the framework of the stirringly neoliberal doctrines. The program for Build Back America is a very good program, of course. In fact, the stimulus, that was just passed. It had many good parts to it. This didn’t happen as a miracle. It didn’t happen because Biden had a religious conversion. It’s been a conservative Democrat, a Clintonite Democrat all his life.

What happened is very substantial popular pressure. That’s where change takes place. There’s lots of popular activism that’s been pressing him and pressing him on every issue, including the most important issue there is destruction of the environment. If we don’t take control of environmental destruction in the next decade or two, we’re finished. It’s that simple. We’re going to reach a tipping point from which there’s no return. We’re facing major catastrophe unless we take action now. It’s known what to do. It’s feasible within reach. It has to be done.

I’m still amazed that Noam Chomsky even knows who I am, not to mention doing events with him and actually influencing his thinking about the present. Blows my mind. Especially given being a fourth-rate and all.